While some museums are closed again due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Apollo’s usual weekly pick of exhibitions will include shows at institutions that remain open as well as digital projects providing virtual access to art and culture.
The French-Moroccan photographer, film-maker and activist Leila Alaoui, whose career was cut short in 2016 when she was killed in a terrorist attack in Burkino Faso at the age of 33, worked to shine a light on the lives of people displaced from their homes around the globe. Key bodies of work include No Pasara (2008), which documented the voyages of North African migrants to Europe; Natreen (We Wait) (2013), which focused on families who had fled the Syrian civil war; and Les Marocains (2014), which celebrated the cosmopolitan fabric of life in contemporary Morocco. Each of these series went on display at Somerset House at the start of October as part of her first UK retrospective, ‘Leila Alaoui: Rites of Passage’; the institution was shuttered by Covid-19 at the start of this month, but it has now made available a video tour of the show, led by the the writer and curator Ekow Eshun, for the duration of the second lockdown in England. Take the tour on the Somerset House website.
Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary here
From the series Natreen (2013), Leila Alaoui. Courtesy Fondation Leila Alaoui/Galleria Continua
Khamlia, South of Morocco #1 from the series Les Marocains (2014), Leila Alaoui. Courtesy Fondation Leila Alaoui/Galleria Continua
From the series No Pasara (2008), Leila Alaoui. Courtesy Fondation Leila Alaoui/Galleria Continua
Screenshot of the virtual tour with Ekow Eshun